Mitt Romney No Longer Has The Support Of Independents

Mitt Romney previously was thought to be a strong general election choice for the Republican Party because of an ability to compete with Barack Obama among independent voters. That no longer appears to be true. Mitt Romney’s unfavorability ratings are soaring among independent voters. Greg Sargent summarizes the results from the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll:

In November, Romney was rated somewhat or very negatively by 22 percent of independents.

In December, Romney was rated somewhat or very negatively by 29 percent of independents.

And in the new poll, Romney was rated somewhat or very negatively by 42 percent of independents — 20 points higher than two months ago.

Also: In November, Romney was beating Obama 47-34 among those voters. Now the numbers are upside down: Obama is beating Romney 44-36.

This is probably because of the questions about his taxes and years at Bain Capital. I would like to think it might also be because independents are figuring out that Romney’s main attacks on Obama, from claiming he has been apologizing for America to his claim that Obama is responsible for three times as many regulations on business as George Bush, are outright lies.

I also hope that other elements of Romney’s past further reduce his favorability among independents. Gawker has been looking at an old Mormon practice of converting the dead to Mormonism:

The Mormon church has repeatedly been criticized for its practice of trawling for dead souls to convert to the faith. Catholic and Jewish organizations have expressed outrage when the names of dead popes and Holocaust victims have turned up on Mormon lists of the baptized. In 1995, the church pledged to “discontinue any future baptisms of deceased Jews” except for direct descendents of living Mormons, tacitly acknowledging that its creepy and weird to claim the souls of people who had no interest in Mormonism for their own.

They found that Mitt Romney’s atheist father-in-law was converted posthumously to Mormonism by the Romney family:

Two readers have sent us confirmation that Edward Davies, Mitt Romney’s militantly atheist father-in-law, was indeed posthumously converted to Mormonism by his family, despite the fact that when he was alive he regarded all religions as “hogwash.”

As we mentioned yesterday, Ann Romney’s Welsh-born father (who Mitt mentioned in last night’s debate to shore up his pro-immigrant bona fides) was an engineer, inventor, and resolute atheist who disdained all organized religion and raised his children accordingly. Davies, his son Roderick told the Boston Globe in 2007, regarded the faithful as “weak in the knees.” But when Mitt began seeing Davies’ daughter Ann, the Romney family launched a concerted effort to convert not only Ann but her entire family to Mormonism. And they were wildly successful: Within a year of meeting Ann, Mitt and his father had converted all three of Edward Davies’ children. Days before she died in 1993, Ann Romney’s mother asked to be converted as well. Edward Davies was the only member of his clan whose soul the Romneys never claimed for their church.

Until he died. According to this entry in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints’ genealogical database, Davies was baptized as a Mormon at a “special family meeting” 14 months after his death: “All ordinances except sealing to spouse performed in Salt Lake Temple on 19 Nov 1993 in special family meeting,” the entry says. (When we previously asked the church whether Davies had been baptized, a spokesperson told us that the information was available only to his family and church members. But it’s apparently right there on the internet for those who know what to look for.)